No, please, don’t take this literally. I’m not advocating infanticide. It’s only a figure of speech (from Wikipedia: a word or a phrase, which transcends its literal interpretation.)

What I’m really trying to say to all aspiring writers–and even some who’ve been around the block–is stop trying to be Shakespeare. The awful truth for the rest of us is that we aren’t the Bard. He had an incredible way with the English language, because he happened to be a poet. He knew about rhythm, rhyme, assonance, consonance, metaphors of all kinds. We, mere mortals, really don’t have the knowledge to spin a phrase like he did.

So, my advice is don’t try and just say what you mean in the most concise and economical manner.

Carve away all those extraneous words and leave your readers with the true meat of your meanings. The rest is only fat, and we all know that fat isn’t good for you!

Need an example? Sure, I’ll show you. First, I’ll start with a very bad sentence that you, as a writer, could easily fall in love with.

Bad sentence written by Eudora Welty:

 Monsieur Boule inserted a delicate dagger in Mademoiselle’s left side and departed with a poised immediacy.

Upon first reading, this is a beautiful sentence. However, when we take a closer look, there’re at least two words stuffed in there that really don’t belong, because, while they might seem a bit more erudite and poetic, they, in fact, contradict the meanings of the words they are meant to modify! Whoever heard of a “delicate” dagger? What does “poised immediacy” mean?

Whenever your reader has to ponder these kinds of questions, you’ve confused them to the point of losing sight of the meaning you are trying to convey.

Better sentence:

Monsieur Boule inserted a dagger in Mademoiselle’s left side and departed immediately.

Now, the meaning is crystal clear. Learn how to do this with your own writing, and your readers will love you for it.

If you have any questions about your own writing or would like to have me discuss any topics about writing, please, drop me a line at our Xynobooks Facebook or Twitter pages!

Voice-recognition (AKA voice transcription) software has come a long way in the last few years. The basic technology’s been around for while, but it’s only recently that the quality of the software and the power of the hardware have caught up to the demands of the process and made voice-recognition a viable tool.

What does this have to do with writing novels? Well, you can use your computer (or pad PC or smartphone) to write your novel by using such software. You talk your story into the computer instead of typing it.

Writing by talking has a long tradition. Literary giants such as Earle Stanley Gardner (author of the Perry Mason novels), Hunter S. Thompson and Don Pendleton often wrote by speaking into Dictaphone wire recorders or tape decks and then hiring someone to listen to the recordings and transcribe them. Rod Serling wrote TV scripts and screenplays using this method so he could sit out by his swimming pool and chain-smoke. Raymond Chandler used it on mornings where he had the shakes too bad to type.

Without naming any specific software, I’d like to suggest that that those of you who aren’t great typists (or those that have trouble getting down to writing in the first place) investigate the possibilities that these programs open up for writers.

Now, these programs don’t absolve writers from reviewing and editing their work to check for “mechanical” defects. Neither do they mean that you, as an author, don’t need to know the rules of writing and proper language usage.

The use of voice-recognition software is emphatically not a license to “write the way you talk.” Doing so is almost never a good idea. You may have to be even more careful to observe the rules of writing when you’re “dictating.”

However, if using voice-recognition software is what it takes to get you writing in the first place, then use it. You’ve got a story to tell and people want to read it. Get it out into the world by any means necessary.

That venerable tool of editing is ultimately your friend, but the marks it makes on your manuscript can be deep wounds, indeed. It can be avoided, however, with some effort on the author’s part.

At Xynobooks, we received a steadily increasing flow of submissions over the course of 2012, and we’ve got several books (in various stages of prep )already in the pipeline for 2013. We’ve noticed recurring problems with submissions, though. Now, some manuscripts come in clean as a whistle, and that’s great. Many come in looking not quite so pretty, but that’s not an insurmountable problem.

Our mission here isn’t solely to publish books; we also want to help new authors grow and improve. To that end, I’d like to offer some suggestions for authors to help them improve their manuscripts before submitting them to us.

We’ve had very few submissions where the problem with the manuscript was its story or the quality of the writing. Even these issues can be constructively addressed, and we can do that, as well. No, the most significant issues with manuscripts we’ve seen are “mechanical errors.” To wit: misspellings (especially phonetic spellings), grammar mistakes, incorrect capitalization, missing words (such as articles), verb tense problems, homophone confusion (this is a BIGGIE; words cannot express how big) and switching of viewpoints from say, 3rd person to 2nd person and back again, just to name a few.

I won’t address each of these individually, at least not in this blog. What I will suggest are resources to aid writers. While I can always make corrections or suggestions to a manuscript (and I will and have), ultimately the writer is responsible for learning the rules of standard English.

For starters, always use the “spellcheck” and “grammar check” functions in your word processor. Just those can make a world of difference.

Xynobooks‘ publications use the standards set forth in the Associated Press Stylebook. It’s not the only stylebook in the world, but what’s important here are the rules it presents for things like writing times, dates, addresses and numerals; many of which are universal in standard English.

If you own no other book as a writer, own the best dictionary you can afford. If you’re not sure that you’re spelling a word correctly, or that a word is the right word to use, look it up. You can even do this on the web now for free. Ditto for a thesaurus.

Strunk and White’s Elements of Style is a classic, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. You may already have it. You might have had to buy it for English Composition 101 in college. If you don’t have it, get it. You’ll write better and clearer sentences after you read it.

Submitting a cleaner and more mechanically correct manuscript to Xynobooks can mean a shortened review time for the manuscript (and therefore potentially faster acceptance). It can also mean decreasing the time needed for the book’s editing process, which means it gets out into the world more quickly. Submitting the best (in mechanical terms) manuscript you can is not only the right thing to do, it’s in your best interest as an author.

You are your own best salesman. All authors, regardless of whether they work with a publisher like Xynobooks, are in large part responsible for pushing themselves on readers, for lack of a better word.

Successful freelance writers for magazines and websites know this, but it holds true for poets and fiction authors as well. Freelancers never stop hustling. Their search for new markets and outlets never ceases for a second. Nobody talks themselves up like a freelancer.

Novelists and poets need to take this strategy to heart. The “e-book success story” author Amanda Hocking knows this in her blood. Hocking’s presence online is constant. She tweets about what kind of coffee she had this morning, but quality isn’t the point; the point is the sheer volume of content generated. Pulling eyeballs towards yourself and your work is the point.

If you’re one of those people who thinks Twitter is blather, Facebook is a waste of time and internet forums are societies for blowhards, you’re wrong.

Even in the hidebound traditional print publishing world, authors get sent out on tours by the publisher (ideally). They do signings in bookstores, readings at local libraries and speeches at college campuses.

Some authors tour even if they have to do it at their own expense, because the print publishers historically have been very choosy about who they expend promotional funds and resources on, and not every author is the recipient of their largesse. Anthony Bourdain had to pay for his own tour for Kitchen Confidential, for example.

An author’s incessant presence online is the digital equivalent of the author tour. You have to make as much noise for yourself as you possibly can, and the internet is a hell of big megaphone. Personal websites, personal blogs, Twitter, Facebook and online forums are indispensable tools for the twenty-first century author.

We diligently pursue all the avenues available to promote our authors and get their books reviewed and noticed out in the world by customers, but the authors’ participation is a vital component in the promotion process.

And if they can do it, so can you. Don’t wait another moment to start working to make your dreams of publication and publicity come true. You are your own best advertisement.

While the Xynobooks staff handles the final formatting of manuscripts before they are published on the various e-book platforms that we serve, prospective authors can do many things to make the process easier and faster.

I’ll be using the word “formatting” in two different senses in this piece. First, to denote the actual appearance of the words on the page, and also in the sense of converting a manuscript from a plain text (.txt) or Rich Text Format (.rtf) document to a Kindle, Nook/EPUB or other electronic book format.

Obviously, the very first step that needs to be taken in creating a readable manuscript is to make sure that there are no (or as few as possible) mechanical errors in the manuscript before it is submitted to Xynobooks.

I know I harp on that point, but mechanical errors are the biggest problems with most of the manuscripts we receive. As always, I direct readers to the Associated Press Stylebook (we use AP style for the Xynobooks website and publications) and my earlier “Editor’s Notes” columns.

It also leads us to the issue of formatting the manuscript’s appearance. One consistent issue with manuscripts we’ve seen is the practice of adding two spaces after a punctuation mark that ends a sentence. Adding two spaces after a sentence is a holdover from high school typing classes (back when that meant typing on an actual typewriter.)

It’s unnecessary and anachronistic in the age of word processors. We urge writers old enough to have been afflicted with this habit to break it. You can use “find & replace” functions in most word processing programs to seek out the double spacings and replace them with single spaces.

Writers should also not use two carriage returns to separate paragraphs.

There are settings within every major word processing program that can set the amount of white space between lines of text and “trailing spaces” between paragraphs.

Authors will have to choose for themselves whether they wish to indent the first lines of paragraphs and have no “trailing space” between them or have a set amount of space between entirely left-justified “block” paragraphs. But once you pick one, stick with it. Don’t ever mix them.

I would also recommend that writers turn on the ability to see all formatting symbols in their manuscripts as they type. In MS Word, that means locating the button with a symbol that looks like a backwards bold-faced capital “P.” Toggling that view and keeping it on allows writers to see any odd formatting instructions that they might insert in their manuscript inadvertently.

MS Word users should also use “Normal” paragraph style and a neutral and common font such as Times New Roman.

Here’s why: the Amazon Kindle and other devices have very strict internal rules about how they’ll display text. This results from their particular file format such as the Kindle .azw, .epub or Sony’s .lrf. Kindle format will only permit the Reader or Reader software to display text in certain ways.

These formatting rules and means of display are not the same as traditional print book formatting or even word processors. E-reader formats have more in common with web text or even print newspapers.

What you see is emphatically not necessarily what you get in e-book formatting. So following the rules is essential for writers and publishers.

Odd fonts or formatting can cause text to display in ways that are essentially unreadable.

This is often an issue with poetry. Poets have historically used unconventional indentations, justifications, fonts and other print formatting tricks to add a visual dimension to their poems or to try and make a reader “hear” words differently in their heads. Books could accommodate these stylized formatting tricks reasonably well.

E-book reading hardware and software simply cannot in many cases, which many poets unfortunately do not realize. The way a poem can be arranged to appear in a word processing program is not always the way it can be made to appear on a Kindle or Nook reader.

Writers should familiarize themselves to the fullest extent possible with not only the traditional rules of print, but also the ways in which those rules change for online and e-book publishing.

While it is and will always remain part of our mission at Xynobooks to educate writers and help them craft their books, writers also have to educate themselves to the fullest extent possible. A correctly formatted and mechanically correct manuscript is, to be blunt, one that we can publish more quickly than a manuscript deficient in either of those areas.

Authors can take proactive steps to shorten their trip to the marketplace, and we urge them to do so.

The electronic book revolution continues apace, and recently much attention has been paid to two people who might well be considered its first stars.

Xynobooks author Sangeeta Bhagwat linked to a Huffington Post article about Amanda Hocking on our Facebook page. Hocking has made a splash recently with her success in writing paranormal young-adult e-books.

When I say “recently,” I mean her success, which has been years in the making, was finally noticed and publicized by the mainstream media. Hocking discusses this phenomenon herself in a blog post this week, writing:

“This is literally years of work you’re seeing. And hours and hours of work each day.”

There’s no such thing as an overnight success. When success happens, it’s the result of long and difficult work. Hocking and another successful and increasingly well-known e-book author, J.A. Konrath, make for an interesting study in not only their differences, but their similarities.

Konrath came to e-books from the traditional print publishing world releasing his first novel after twelve years of rejections by publishers. He published several more before beginning his journey into e-book publishing.

Hocking wrote seventeen novels over several years before self-publishing her first released book. What followed was a whirlwind of relentless promotion coupled with ongoing writing. Now, she may be the most successful e-book author to date.

What does this mean for potential e-book authors? I’ll let Hocking tell you in her own words:

“There is so much stress in doing it all yourself. The editing is never good enough. And finding an editor isn’t as easy everyone thinks. People thinking an editor is just having someone read through it a few times, checking for basic grammar and spelling, and while that is part of it, it’s also much larger than that. It’s helping tighten up sentences, watching repeated phrases, helping with flow, etc.”

Hocking and Konrath not only came up the hard way in publishing,but along their journies, they also developed skill sets that assisted them in leveraging their native abilities for success. They learned how writing works mechanically; they learned proper grammar, spelling and punctuation. They learned how to promote themselves and their work. They learned the business aspects of writing.

Not all e-book authors have all those skills by the time they complete a book. Very few people can do it all. Even Hocking doesn’t, as she says above.

Xynobooks is here to help you with the things you can’t do yourself as an author. Almost no-one is a one-person book factory. We’ll help you craft your book and improve it, both mechanically and artistically. We’ll promote it to the fullest extent possible. We’ll format it for publication and get it into the places it needs to be for sales. We’ll design a cover.  We’ll create multimedia marketing tools.

And we’ll never ask you to pay us to do it unlike some other companies.

Can Xynobooks or anyone else promise Hocking or Konrath-level success to any author? Of course not. But the examples of those two authors have shown that great success is possible for e-books. It’s possible for authors to thrive outside the traditional system in the new world of electronic publishing.

It’s possible for us to do it together.

Punctuation and other “mechanical” errors such as incorrect spacing, capitalization, sentence structure, and spelling can be killers for your writing. If you get them wrong, it can mark you as ignorant, which can have serious consequences for a struggling writer.

Therefore, it is vital that writers understand and memorize the rules. There are various style books out there, such as the Chicago Manual of Style and the Modern Language Association’s handbook.

As a matter of policy, Xynobooks uses the rules set forth in the Associated Press Stylebook and standard American English spellings for its site content and publications.

We’ll cover various punctuation marks in brief, but for more extensive coverage, writers are encouraged to refer directly to the AP Stylebook.

Hyphens separate certain compound words or phrases such as “quick-witted” or “high-grade.”

Always consult a dictionary or other reference source if you’re not sure, but many compound words that were hyphenated in the past such as “zoo-keeper” are not commonly hyphenated in the modern age. Check a recent and reputable dictionary if you are uncertain about hyphenating a word.

Hyphens are also a component of compound modifiers. That is, two or more words that express a single concept and precede a noun, such as “red-orange crayon” or “well-manicured hands.”

Hyphens are part of descriptors that follow a form of the verb to be. For example, “Bill is quick-witted,” or “Surprisingly, wrestling’s ‘Triple H’ is soft-spoken.”

Dashes are differentiated from hyphens first by being physically longer in length as a symbol, but the two are often confused.

Some keyboards contain only a hyphen key, and no longer dash is available. In this case, two hyphens can be placed in sequence (–) to create an artificial dash symbol.

Some word processing programs automatically correct this into a proper dash symbol or can be set to do so. In other programs, a combination of keys can be used to display a dash. Check the instructions of your particular word processing program.

Dashes can be used in fiction to denote an abrupt change of thought in a character’s internal monologue or a similar change or breaking off of their spoken dialogue. Dashes can also begin a sentence when a character resumes speaking the dialogue that another character interrupted previously.

Archaically,dashes were sometimes used to stand in for unprintable profanities or the most objectionable parts of obscene expressions.

Sometimes, phrases that would ordinarily be set off by commas themselves, lead to lists of items that must themselves be separated by commas. In such a case, it is correct to use dashes to introduce the list. For example, “Ted rattled off the qualities—indolence, poor hygiene, bad temper and a propensity towards violence—that would be present in the ideal candidate for the open customer service position.”

Ellipses (…) are used journalistically or in non-fiction to denote the redacted parts of condensed information, such as when an extensive quote has been condensed.

The most common use for an ellipse in fiction or even poetry is to denote a character’s spoken dialogue or internal thoughts trailing off into silence. For example, “Maybe they are werepossums,” Ted said, half to himself, “and maybe not…”

Semicolons are sort of an in-between point between commas and periods. They’re used when one needs a symbol that denotes a longer pause in a sentence or a stronger separation of elements than a comma would provide, but one doesn’t need to end the sentence outright.

Semicolons can also separate elements of a series that are themselves lists or series of elements already separated by commas. For example, “Ted is survived by his children, Bob, Carol, Ted Jr. and Alice; his ex-wives, Hortense, Gertrude and Jethrine; and brothers Mammon, Asmodeus and Belphegor.”

Unlike elements in a series separated by commas, a semicolon is used in this case before the final “and” that precedes the last element in the series.

Punctuation and other “mechanical” errors such as incorrect spacing, capitalization, sentence structure, and spelling can be killers for your writing. If you get them wrong, it can mark you as ignorant, which can have serious consequences for a struggling writer.

Therefore, it is vital that writers understand and memorize the rules. There are various style books out there, such as the Chicago Manual of Style and the Modern Language Association’s handbook.

As a matter of policy, Xynobooks uses the rules set forth in the Associated Press Stylebook and standard American English spellings for its site content and publications.

We’ll start with punctuation, as that seems to be difficult for many people. If one’s work is not punctuated correctly, the thoughts one is trying to express can be unclear to the reader.

We’ll cover various punctuation marks in brief, but for more extensive coverage, writers are encouraged to refer directly to the AP Stylebook.

Apostrophes are used primarily to denote possession. For example: Bob’s bicycle suddenly burst into flame. Or: Bob’s face clouded with worry as he watched his bicycle burn.

When the possession is plural, the apostrophe follows the “plural s.” For example: The archers’ arrows blackened the sky like a swarm of locusts.

Apostrophes are also used in contractions such as “can’t” for “cannot” or “don’t” for “do not.”

Contractions should generally be used in modern dialogue. However, the use or disuse of contractions can be a great way to distinguish the speaking styles of various characters and differentiating them by age, social class or education level.

Periods end sentences. However, when a sentence is spoken dialogue in a story, the dialogue ends with a comma inside the quotation marks, so long as the dialogue is followed with a notation of who said the dialogue and/or how they said it. For example: “I can’t believe they burned my bike,” Bob said sadly. Alternatively: Bob said, “It was probably the Mafia that burned it.”

Quotation marks contain dialogue. As in the above sentences, the spoken words of the character are contained with quotation marks. Always use double quotation marks. Single quotation marks are used by one character to quote another character’s words within the speaking character’s dialogue. For example: Bob said, “Ted’s claim is that it was ‘the Illuminati’ that burned my bike, not the Mafia.”

Sometimes a character’s spoken dialogue is extensive. So extensive, in fact, that it has to be broken up into paragraphs. In that case, the first paragraph of dialogue is not contained by closing quotation marks. It is left open, and the next paragraph of dialogue is started with opening quotation marks. Closing quotation marks are added to the very end of the final paragraph of the dialogue only. This signifies that the character speaking has concluded his extensive remarks.

Also, punctuation (periods, commas, whatever) always goes inside the quotation marks, as it does with parentheses.

Commas separate clauses in a sentence and commas also separate the various elements of a series or list. For example: There were four main suspects now in the arson: the Mafia, the Illuminati, the local Webelos den and the Toastmasters Club of Schaumburg.

Note that there was no comma after the before the conjunction “and” in the sentence above. Regardless of how many elements are in a list or series, a comma never immediately precedes the conjunction that immediately precedes the last element in the series.

Note also that a colon was used in the above example to introduce the series.

A website, GreatWriting.co.uk, re-published a Stephen King essay from 1986 entitled “Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully: in Ten Minutes” (please follow the link to read the piece.)

There’s some good advice on writing in the piece. Hardly a surprise, though–if you wanted to learn about writing for the popular market, there can’t be many better teachers than King.

However, there’s some terrible 27-year-old advice in the piece for selling one’s work. Actually, let me amend that statement. The advice wasn’t terrible in 1986, but it’s close to worthless now due to the sweeping changes in the marketplace.

Selling one’s writing, especially novels or long-form non-fiction, was always a numbers game slanted horribly against the writer. In traditional publishing channels, it still is.

A writer’s odds of selling a book to one of the big houses on Publisher’s Row in New York are terrible. And the quality of the writer’s work has little bearing on this problem. This isn’t because the Big Publishers are terrible people who hate writers, it’s because of the numbers.

Not simply the numbers of submissions, although those are bad enough. The “slush piles” that an unsolicited manuscript can land on in an agent’s office or at a publishing house can fill a room. And it’s going to be examined either by an intern or a low-paid “reader.”

Even manuscripts requested by the publishers in response to an author’s “query letter” are fighting an uphill battle.

There are also financial considerations. A Big New York Publisher has a tremendous amount of overhead, for openers. Office space in one of the most expensive cities on the planet. Armies of administrative staff. Printing costs.

All of these expenses, while legitimate, inflate the cost of books. Which drives down sales of books to a significant degree. A $25 or $30 hardback is simply beyond the reach of many consumers.

This dwindling market means that there are fewer publishing houses putting out fewer books every year. This only makes things harder for a new author trying to get a book published.

Magazines, especially those that publish fiction, are in even worse shape. No new writer’s cracked Playboy in decades, and someday soon, it probably won’t be there to crack.

The problem isn’t that there are fewer readers. Given the essentially text-based nature of the internet, it might be fair to say that there are more readers now than ever.

People are still reading books. They’re just not reading books the same way. The internet and associated technologies have opened up a tremendous opportunity that so far, only an adventurous few are seeking to explore.

Xynobooks is in on the ground floor of the e-book revolution in the publishing industry, and so are its authors.

We’re aggressively meeting the challenges and seizing the opportunities of the new millennium, while hidebound old-school publishers are repeating the mistakes already made by their counterparts in the music and movie industries.

The rules have changed for everyone. Power is in the people’s hands in a way never seen before.

We can help you. We’re the open door to the future. The door to the past is almost closed.

This is a biggie. Technical errors are the bane of the genre writer’s existence, mainly, but they can also undo any writer.

If a character in your English country house drama set in 1860 makes a reference to “Mr. Nobel’s fearsome invention, dynamite,” then you’re in trouble because Alfred Nobel didn’t patent dynamite until 1867. And someone will notice and write you an e-mail that could range from condescending to hostile in tone.

Pedantry is the watchword of the internet, although the problem predates the Web. Back in the 1970s, action author Don Pendleton once mistakenly described an M-16 assault rifle as firing 7.62mm caliber bullets (the M-16 is chambered for 5.56mm caliber) and got letters about it for 10 years after.

Does it sound like people make a mountain out of a molehill? Well, they do, but that doesn’t excuse writers from doing necessary research. Unless your story is pure fantasy or science fiction with elements so far removed from reality that explaining them is superfluous, you’ll need to know the details.

As you might guess from the second paragraph above, technical accuracy is a vital element of setting. The example cited would probably slip past most readers, but not every reader, and a mistake like that can jerk someone right out of the story.

Not only can a flubbed detail get under a reader’s skin and interfere with their enjoyment of the story, it can cause them to doubt the writer in general. Suspension of the reader’s disbelief is strictly voluntary on their part. The reader agrees to be lied to by the writer, but they can revoke their license at any time for any reason.

So if you’re going to bring something up, whether it’s a machine, an historical incident, a period detail of clothing, whatever, get it right. Once you call the reader’s attention to it, they’ve got the right to scrutinize it. That’s the bargain.

Some readers are unbelievably forgiving, and some have a zero tolerance policy. You have no way of knowing which one will buy your book.

Technical accuracy can help you avoid clichés as well. If you write a private eye story, don’t let your detective get knocked out by the bad guys all the time. Or maybe not ever. Philip Marlowe and Mike Hammer got whacked with so many pistol butts, tire irons and blackjacks, that in real life they would have had to have their mail forwarded to their MRI tubes. Or their caskets.

There is one additional danger to bring up, and that’s excessive explanation of genuinely fantastic elements. You can cobble up some vague babble to cover them in most cases and satisfy the average reader. Going overboard trying to explain essentially magic things sounds silly and a writer can paint themselves into a corner by doing so.

Star Wars fans will recognize this problem as “Midichlorian Syndrome”. All I can say is, I was never a kid who needed to know the details of how Superman flew. The guy was from another planet–what was he going to do, take the bus?